Gerry McGovernGerry McGovern helps customers complete their most important tasks when they arrive at a website. His proven process routinely results in the removal of as much as 90% of the content on a website. This requires content managers to shift their mindset from a simple production model to an ongoing customer-centric "eternal beta."

Gerry and I talked about:

the shift in power away from organizations to customers

the importance of customer centricity

the evolution of web content from a push model to a pull model

the differences between keywords, carewords, and brandwords

how branding has shifted from broadcasting messages to facilitating conversations among customers

conventional branding's continued relevance in the digital age

the evolution of content from project-based production to continuous evolution & improvement

the importance of focusing on top tasks

how to identify and measure top tasks

why we use products we don't trust

Gerry's Bio

Gerry McGovern helps large organizations deliver a better digital customer experience. His commercial clients include Microsoft, Dropbox, Cisco, NetApp, VMware, and IBM. He has also consulted with the US, UK, EU, Dutch, Canadian, Norwegian, and Irish governments.

Gerry has developed a research and management model to help large organizations improve customer experience through identifying and optimizing customer top tasks. It’s called Top Tasks Management. A highly-regarded speaker, he has spoken on digital customer experience in 35 countries.

He has written six books on digital customer experience. His latest is called Transform: A Rebel’s Guide for Digital Transformation. It shows that digital transformation is far more about culture change than technology change. The Irish Times described Gerry as one of five visionaries who have had a major impact on the development of the Web. He is the founder and CEO of Customer Carewords.

Video

Here's the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/ar_9Qtd4i08

Show Notes/"Transcript"

[Not an actual transcript - just my quick notes on first listen-through]

00:20 - my intro

00:50 - Gerry intro - same broad intent in both content and tasks - his background is journalism and he writes constantly - so not as if he's left world of content - mid-90s saw world-changing coming - saw early on sense of shift in power away from organizations to customers - his "North Star" - if you want to be successful you need to be customer centric - how to do this in digital - it's words that help you navigate the digital space - maybe 10-15 years we'll navigate a visual VR landscape but for now it's words - "Content is the foundation of the digital customer experience." - most essential element of delivering a great customer experience is content - "help people do stuff" - that's his focus now - customer centricity - still does lots of content even though he identifies as a customer experience person

4:25 - question - evolution of content - carewords over keywords and then tasks - any Eureka! moments?

5:30 - problem with old push media like PointCast - not on the web to be bombarded by random info - early 2000s insight about keywords vs carewords vs brandwords- arose with research on "cheap flights" vs. "low fares" - "low fares" was branding term barely searched for compared with "cheap flights" - marketers said, we can't use word cheap it will hurt brand but 5 years later they were all using it - had realized that they had to follow - that's how you get them there, search terms, then when you arrive at the site you need to shift to a different language - like passing the baton in a 400 relay - you need to pass them along to carewords as soon as they're on the site - another example: university s...